


All That I Once Held As True

by Scribe



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Exes, Ficlet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 12:05:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8488813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scribe/pseuds/Scribe
Summary: Inside the snow globe it's night-dark and gusting occasional flurries of snow, which means that Enjolras must be halfway across the world from the overcast Paris afternoon outside Grantaire's window.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting on my hard drive for a year and a half waiting for more inspiration to flesh it out, so I figured at this point I might as well just post it as the snippet it is. Thanks to fiercynn, and apologies for ignoring good beta advice.

There's a snow globe on Grantaire's bedside table. 

It's not a very good one, just half a sphere holding a little lopsided castle and a painted background of mountains and trees. He's never been able to tell if it's supposed to depict some particular place. It was dredged out of someone's attic, though he can't actually remember whose anymore; he has a faint image of the narrow stairs, several of them laughing as they rooted around in dusty, cobwebbed heat, but he can't connect it to any house in particular. It might have been Jehan's, or maybe Courfeyrac's. 

Inside the globe it's night-dark and gusting occasional flurries of snow, which means that Enjolras must be halfway across the world from the overcast Paris afternoon outside Grantaire's window.

It had been a school project, of all things, a long time ago when Grantaire still thought he might be able to train his little hedgewitch magic into something more useful. The classes hadn't been any help. Grantaire's magic is stubbornly stuck on the small and personal, and even then it flickers and balks when he tries to use it for strangers. The only enchantments he can ever get to last are the ones he does for his closest friends. He'd once charmed Joly's cane so that it would fetch itself from across the room at the snap of its owner's fingers, and that hadn't yet worn off the last time they'd seen each other. 

The snow globe doesn't seem to have worn off either. There's no real way to tell, of course; maybe Enjolras's white-inked thumbprint has faded from beneath the little castle and the globe is just showing random weather, or the weather of wherever that castle actually is, or who knows what else. It's occurred to him more than once that the enchantment could easily be reading the weather around Enjolras's corpse. 

He's pretty sure that isn't the case, if only because sometimes it changes too quickly to be anything but the product of teleportation. Unless someone is teleporting Enjolras's body around, which would be odd but not outside the realm of possibility. He tries not to think about it too much. He tries not to think about Enjolras very much at all, really, not about how all the sunrises and sunsets and stormfronts might be enough information to figure out a location if he tried, not about the stretches of time when Enjolras's weather echoes Grantaire's. It could be raining in many places on the earth at any given time.

It isn't raining in Paris now, but it's threatening to. Grantaire has a couple of hours of deliveries to do and then he barters dinner from Floreal in exchange for a better charm on her front door's two locks. He doesn't ask what has her worried. She wants to go out afterward and most days he would, take her dancing and see how much of polite society he can shock, escorting a white woman, but this time he begs off. He's antsy from the claustrophobic press of the sky, like he hasn't been able to take a full breath all afternoon. The day fades to watery grey twilight around him as he walks home.

Night has vanished from the globe while he's been out, taking the snow with it and leaving golden midday sun. It's just bright enough for Grantaire to lay out his sketchbook in the bed beside it and spare the use of a candle. He draws nothing but distracted geometry for a while, waiting for the storm to break. Rain always puts him in a creative mood, for some reason, but the heavy electric air before it comes makes his skin crawl. After a while the globe abruptly switches to the split-second nothingness he assumes means a teleport and then settles into an eerie greenish night.

Grantaire blinks and swears in the sudden darkness. There are candles on the rickety little desk that doubles as his kitchen table; he only smacks his shin on a chair once in getting himself and his sketchbook over there. Thunder grumbles outside. The wind is starting to pick up, too, so he closes the shutters before they blow off the house.

He makes it just before the rain starts. It's the kind of storm you could see coming up the street toward you if there was any light, a racing wall of rain that overtakes the house in a sudden hissing cacophony. Grantaire can feel his shoulders loosen, and he goes to fish his pencil out of the sheets. On the bedside table it's raining in the little globe too.

The lightning doesn't bother him, but he's absorbed enough in his drawing that the first real clap of thunder startles him half out of his chair. It sounds like it's directly overhead, feels like he's hearing it with his bones. He's hasn't yet bent his head again when the next lightning strike sears through the room, so he sees the miniature fork flashing blue-bright through the snow globe at the same time. 

He makes himself remember that there's a lot of lightning in the world.

He keeps his eyes on the globe, though. The next lightning strike is perfectly in synch as well. So is the third. The enchantment must have finally worn off, he tells himself, and it's just showing me my own weather. He watches it reflect the weather outside a little longer, until the storm is settling into nothing but steady rain, thunder and lightning moving off to some other part of the city. 

Someone knocks on his door.

The sound of the storm washes over him as he opens it, rain pounding and streams rushing along the street, pouring from gutters. Enjolras is standing on his porch, face startlingly pale under a dark oilcloth hood.

"I know you don't want me here," he says, and Grantaire has to strain to hear him over the rain; his voice is thready and weak with spell-use. "I thought I'd wager that you'd rather have me in your house than have me dead, if it came down to it."

Grantaire feels strangely numb, watching Enjolras prop himself up against one of the porch's spindly pillars, waiting for anger or disbelief or fright or- something else to make itself known. He has to fight through the blank spaces of his own mind to find words.

"You always did know how to make an entrance," he settles on, although he can tell that the tone isn't quite right. He steps aside to let Enjolras in.

 

Even if Enjolras did have somewhere else to go, he's got no way to get there, if Grantaire's any judge. There's not a drop of magic left in him. He looks like he barely has the strength to stand long enough to divest himself of the oilcloth, and he only manages to sink into Grantaire's chair rather than falling into it by virtue of still, apparently, being Enjolras.

The room is dim and close. Grantaire lights a second candle and then a third, looking Enjolras over in the flickering light. He's mostly dry, other than the cuffs of his sleeves and trousers, but he looks bedraggled anyway. The skin of his hands is stained darker even than Grantaire's, blowback from whatever magic he's been doing blackening him up to the wrists. When he rolls up his wet sleeves the contrast with his ghost-pale arms is unsettling.

Grantaire takes the opposite chair and watches Enjolras fighting to stay upright. He looks noticeably older, a little bit from the way his shoulders are broader and his face narrower than Grantaire remembers, but mostly from the hunted weariness in every line of his body, evidence of a world that no amount of study had allowed Grantaire to enter.

"What happened?" he finally asks. Enjolras's head comes up. In the dim light his eyes are nearly colorless, but Grantaire can fill in the blue well enough from memory.

"They learned who I am, somehow," says Enjolras. "They found us."

The strange blankness he'd felt at seeing Enjolras in his doorway is gone, all at once; beneath it Grantaire finds himself utterly heartsick.

"The others?" he makes himself ask.

"Alive, but that's all I know. I don't dare contact them."

"As if you could send even one word of a message like this," says Grantaire. Enjolras's hands are trembling just the tiniest bit. He gets up to put the kettle on rather than think about reaching across the table to hold them still.

Enjolras is quiet behind him. Grantaire whispers the water into heating faster, rinses out the largest of his mismatched mugs. He doesn't have the one Enjolras used to use anymore. After a moment's thought he rummages in the back of the cabinet for one of Musichetta's blends; it's not his favorite, but Enjolras looks like he could use something familiar right now. Grantaire cups his hands around the mug while it steeps and encourages it to be soothing, to find the places where Enjolras has blistered his throat with too-powerful words and do its best to heal. The charm takes easily. Maybe Musichetta's tea is primed for such uses, or maybe it's that Grantaire's magic has always worked its best for Enjolras. Like a dog ever hoping to please its master, he thinks, and sighs at himself. Spending time with Floreal and her friends has done a lot over the years to remind him that not being a master sorcerer doesn't make him worthless, but like most lessons it's easier to forget than it was to learn.

From the silence he half-expects Enjolras to be asleep by the time he returns, but he's still upright in the chair, examining Grantaire's abandoned sketchbook. Grantaire takes it from him and hands over the tea instead. The sight of his blond head bent over the steaming mug makes something twist in Grantaire's chest, like maybe Enjolras's thready voice and stained hands are from nothing more sinister than a difficult exam, an overambitious project, like he might allow Grantaire to coddle him until they have to go their separate ways to class in the morning.

"I hope you realize how much danger you're putting yourself in by hiding me," Enjolras says, breaking the illusion.

"I hope you realize how much danger you're putting me in by coming here," Grantaire retorts, stung. As if he could not know; as if he would have turned Enjolras away. "Why me, anyway? You know I can't help you."

"It's the only place I could think of where they might not look. Anyone they think I might contact will be watched."

"Oh, good. At least I'm insignificant enough to be of use."

"We haven't been on speaking terms for nearly six years," Enjolras says, giving him a level look. "I didn't think anyone would count you among my friends."

Grantaire sucks in a breath. "You're kind as always," he says lightly, but he can't hold Enjolras's gaze.

"Oh, come on, R, don't," says Enjolras, and between the nickname and the familiar exasperation Grantaire hears the echoes of a hundred old arguments. "I'm not being cruel. You wouldn't call me your friend either."

"I suppose you're right. Many things, but not friend," Grantaire allows. "What on earth made you think this was a good idea? For all you know I could be the one trying to kill you."

"Not unless your abilities have changed significantly." Enjolras takes a sip of his tea and then blinks at it. He must recognize the magic from all those years ago. When his eyes come up his face is strangely open, startled, and it makes Grantaire lose track of the sarcasm on the tip of his tongue. He offers Enjolras a bitter half-smile instead.

"I'm no sorcerer, that's true enough, but I could be paying one to do my bidding."

"No," says Enjolras, "not these men. They wouldn't take orders from you for all the money in the world." 

That could be for many reasons: his lack of magic, the color of his skin, the company he keeps. It hurts more than it should—not that some faceless evildoers wouldn't respect him, but the matter-of-fact way Enjolras says it.

"They could be paying me. Maybe I'm working for them. Maybe this is all a trap."

"What do you want me to say, Grantaire?" demands Enjolras, impatience and weariness warring in his tone. He drinks more tea and rattles the table a little when he sets the mug down too hard. "Here I am. If it's a trap, spring it."

"It's not a trap," says Grantaire. He doesn't really know why he's arguing against himself, but he's never been good at thinking before he speaks around Enjolras. He's angry still, for things long in the past, and terrified anew for the future, and entirely unable to wrap his mind around the fact that Enjolras is here, hunched over his little kitchen table and losing the battle to stay awake.

His eyelids droop and then his head, spell-stained fingers slipping slowly from the mug, and then he visibly rallies and drags his gaze up to Grantaire's, accusatory. 

"Did you drug the tea?" he demands.

"What? No! Of course I didn't- oh." Grantaire pauses as something occurs to him. "I didn't, but Musichetta might have."

" _Musichetta?_ " Enjolras looks a little wild. Grantaire glares at him.

"If she Saw this a couple of months ago, she could have spiked the tea and left it here on purpose, knowing I'd give it to you. Just because you're obviously going to collapse if you don't get some rest, not to kidnap you or whatever, gods, Enjolras. Don't you dare suspect Musichetta of working against you."

"I wouldn't," says Enjolras.

"Joly and Bossuet would never speak to you again, for one."

Silence follows his words. Grantaire looks away. Outside their little circle of candlelight the rest of the apartment is shadowy and cold. It looks newly shabby to him, newly empty, given that it is always the first and often the second and he rarely notices either.

"I wish I could tell you they were safe," Enjolras says quietly.

"I wish it could be assumed and not require telling," Grantaire replies. That's the way to a tired argument, though, and not one that needs rekindling tonight. He stands up from the table.

"It could be that you're just exhausted and Musichetta has nothing to do with it," he says. "I'll find you something to sleep in. Finish your tea, you'll want your voice back in the morning."

 

There's no privacy to speak of in Grantaire's one room. He pulls his sketchbook back across the table and pretends to be engrossed in it while Enjolras changes, just for the illusion of politeness. There was a time when he wouldn't have been expected to look away, when he might have been permitted interest, admiration, familiarity, but that was long enough ago that even the memories are faded with disuse. It seems like it occurred in a different world entirely, although it was in this room, in fact, and in the same bed that still stands in the corner that Grantaire had taken such liberties. 

He keeps his eyes down. The rain is still pounding on the roof, covering the faint noises of Enjolras moving around in the small space. Nothing's started leaking yet, at least. He should remember to check during the night.

"Grantaire," says Enjolras. He looks up and finds Enjolras on the bed, facing away, slowly pulling his shirt over his head.

Grantaire's first thought, just a split second of old, jarring instinct, is that it's an invitation. His second thought is that he could have drawn it better. His third thought is: _oh_.

The tattoo is a sun, spreading over Enjolras's left shoulderblade, unremarkable at a glance. It must be Feuilly's hand, because half-hidden in the thick lines of it are eight small points of golden light, casting a faint glow on Enjolras's skin. Grantaire stares. This kind of magic is outlawed, and supposedly lost to time as well. He can't imagine how they managed it.

"All alive," he says at last, not quite a question.

"All alive," says Enjolras. "I'd know." 

Grantaire takes the few steps to the edge of the bed, unable to tear his eyes away. Enjolras sits quietly and lets him look his fill. Up close, two of the little lights seem dimmer than the others, and maybe they flicker a little, but maybe it's just the effect of the unsteady candlelight. He wonders helplessly which of the Amis they represent. Enjolras would probably want to be told, if he can't already feel it, but Grantaire quails from knowing exactly whose suffering they can't relieve. 

He wants nothing more than to press his palm to the tattoo, half because it's the only link he's had to them in years, half because there hasn't been a moment since they met that he doesn't want to reach out for Enjolras. If things had been different there have been nine points of light. Grantaire might have inked the tattoo himself, then, because Feuilly's craftsmanship is exquisite but what Enjolras has done deserves something that's beautiful as a work of art, too.

Things are how they are, though, and Grantaire is no part of Les Amis. He makes himself put his hands in his pockets and turn away, unwilling to ask for more when Enjolras allowing him to see this at all is a deliberate gift. 

"You'll get cold," he says. "Put a shirt on, and I'll get you an extra blanket."

"I don't want to put you out of your own bed," says Enjolras, a little muffled as he complies.

"I see you've forgotten the hours I keep. I won't be tired for ages yet, and- oh, I refuse to have this argument with you." That was always more Enjolras's line than his own, and rare enough even then, but he isn't going to fight over the bed when Enjolras looks like he might very well lack the strength to stand up out of it.

Enjolras doesn't push it any further, a sure sign of exhaustion. Grantaire tosses his extra blanket on the foot of the bed and goes to fuss with the shutters.

"I'll set what wards I have," he says. "They won't do much against whoever's coming for you, but at least they'll give us some warning."

"Don't," says Enjolras. "Don't do anything out of the ordinary. If they do think to look here, our only hope is to have you go about your life as normal."

"As you like. Will the candlelight bother you?"

Enjolras snorts. "I don't think the fires of hell could keep me awake, to be perfectly honest."

"Good, then." Grantaire blows out two of the candles anyway and settles himself at the table next to the third, sketchbook in hand. He's accustomed enough to working by such light. The room lapses into silence, except for the steady rush of the rain. Enjolras is a shadowed human shape in his bed, both familiar and not; Grantaire draws other things, like he's been doing for so long now.

At some point Enjolras speaks, his voice sleep-slow but steady.

"I know you, Grantaire," he says. "Of course you weren't going to turn me in."

That could be intended to mean _I trust you_ , or just as easily _I know you still love me_. There's no telling from Enjolras's tone, and Grantaire would just as soon not know which it is.

"Go to sleep, Enjolras," he says.

 

No one comes in the night. The storm blows itself out as Enjolras sleeps, sprawled ungracefully beneath Grantaire's blankets. One of his arms nearly touches the globe on the bedside table. Grantaire listens to the rhythm of his slow breaths, sketching mythical creatures from half-remembered stories until the candle burns itself out. 

Morning finds him still awake, sitting with his back to the window, watching a watery dawn break in the little snow globe as the room around them lightens.

**Author's Note:**

> If I keep writing fics about rain, someday I'll have used every lyric from Paul Simon's _Kathy's Song_ as a title.


End file.
